Courting Wikipedia.

In the past three years, the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been cited in some fashion in more than 100 published opinions. (1) The citations are sometimes inexplicable. The Seventh Circuit, for example, cited Wikipedia in a recent drug case to provide background information on the defendant ("Radomski is a former trainer of the Polish boxer Andrew Golota--the world's most colorful boxer"), even though Judge Richard Posner, who wrote the opinion, had firsthand experience of the Web site's unreliability. (2) It once erroneously referred to conservative pundit Ann Coulter as one of his former law clerks. (3)

While the Posner citation may seem harmless, it provides an example of a disturbing trend. More and more law students and law professors are citing to entries in this publicly authored Web site in their papers, attorneys are relying on it in their legal briefs, expert witnesses are using it to support their opinions, and courts are citing the source either tangentially or, even worse, as the primary legal basis for their opinions. (4)

What is going on? Since when did a Web site that any Internet surfer can edit become an authoritative source by which law students could write passing papers, experts could provide credible testimony, lawyers could craft legal arguments, and judges could issue precedents? It is one thing to embrace technology and the convenience it offers; it is quite another to rely on an inherently unreliable source as grounds for shaping this country's law and policy for generations to come.

Wikipedia got its start in 2001 as a source of content for the expert-written, peer-reviewed English-language Web encyclopedia Nupedia. By 2007, Wikipedia had severed ties with its online cousin and expanded its presence to the point that it now consistently ranks among the top 10 most popular Web sites in the United States.

Unlike Nupedia, whose content was subject to prepublication expert review, Wikipedia's software constitutes an "open-source" program that, as of this writing, allows nearly anyone to edit or supplement content--whether it is completely accurate or entirely fictitious. Due to the serious problems inherent in any open-source model, Wikipedia's Web site (www.wikipedia.org) provides a disturbing series of disclaimers.

The site cautions users that "with rare exceptions, articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link." (5) The Web site further warns that its content is "continually edited and improved over time" and therefore "users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality …